Expert: Cleggsan - 12/27/2009

Question
I saw your answer and insight to another persons ER8 issue. We have the same thing on the car (2001 Tiburon) we just gave to our daughter for Xmas. The tapes worked fine then yesterday stuck in and when we tried to eject we ended up with ER8. Since then we have tried the pull fuse (no joy) and then prying with eject button (Joy - the tape is out). But now the tape deck won't take a new tape. Acting like it still has the stuck tape in. I looking at this we found some tape labelling in the unit from the previous owner and have pulled what we can see out. We are considering pulling the unit out to see if there is more paper inside. Any suggestions on how not to break the clips or if we should do something else to get the unit reset. Also we did hear the eject/play motor running until we got the tape out so we may have to wait for the unit to cool off - based on ER8 being a overheat as well as stuck tape indicator as your previous post indicated. Please letus know what to do next

Answer
For a history such as this I strongly urge you to get professional help.  A good audio shop deals with these things on a regular basis and they know how to pull the unit out, put it on the bench with the covers removed and clean out all the old stuff, check the tension settings, clean the pinch rollers and lubricate in the right places, etc.  The cost will be worth it, but not cheap.  You can go to www.cructhfield.com and go through their "outfit my car" findings and see if the cost vs replacement bang for the repair buck is worth it all.  Crutchfield results will give you some ideas of what the best strategy may be.

Sadly, my experience is once a mechanism starts swallowing tapes and getting stuck it is not a viable solution for simple fixes; it requires a complete cleaning and adjustment by one who has the test equipment to accomplish the job.

Hope this helps.